Many people I meet in Russia belong to a well-trained cultural elite, travel to Berlin or Amsterdam for a weekend, speak excellent English, are cultured, system-critical, committed and humorous. And because of the language barrier, I don‘t even get to talk to other people. For example, with the taxi driver who drove me from Kaluga 1 to the Nikola-Lenivets art park and back again two days later. About 5 hours together in a car and the conversation was limited to a few practical sentences translated with an app. And yet, on the way back he absolutely wanted to show me his city Kaluga, the new city and the old city with buildings that are up to 300 years old, the space rocket, the victory square guarded by soldiers, the theatre, the cinema and the police ministry before my app thanked at the station for the pleasant and safe trip and the city tour.
